ideablog
Wanna hear something funny?
JOKES CAN BE SHITTY AND OPPRESSIVE
JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER WAY OF EXPRESSING YOURSELF AND YOUR OPINION
FREEDOM OF SPEECH MEANS THAT I CAN POINT OUT HOW SHITTY AND OPPRESSIVE CERTAIN JOKES CAN BE/ARE
AND YOU CAN JUST KEEP ON TELLIN’ ‘EM IF YOU’RE OK WITH BEING A SHITTY OPPRESSIVE ASSHOLE
It doesn’t mean that because it’s a joke I just have to grin and bear it
You don’t get a “get out of being called out on being a dick weasel” free card because it’s ‘just a joke’.
Hilarious.
52 notes (via whatfreshhellisthis)
Yeah, slight flaw in your wicked cool plan there buddy:
Unless they’ve told you their status RE: rape, sexual assult, molestation and other forms of sexual attack
You can’t tell!
No really, I don’t have a flashing sign on my forehead saying “THIS ONE HAS BEEN RAPED, MOLESTED AND SEXUALLY…
328 notes (via whatfreshhellisthis)
The problem with cultural appropriation is that it replaces the original with a copy created by the dominant culture. It dilutes the original, removes all symbolic value from it and replaces it with a ready to consume product devoid of context and meaning.
Cultural appropriation, at its most extreme, is a violent form of colonization because it removes the original group behind the culture and reinforces stereotypes about that group (i.e. ALL First Nation folks are reduced to “war bonnets”, whether their culture uses them or not; all Latin@s are reduced to a stylized version of Catholicism regardless of their spirituality; etc.). The mechanism of commodifying a culture ends up being a tool to re-inforce [sic] racism as it reduces the people behind those cultures to a mere cartoon like representation of their realities. It’s a great way to ultimately Other and objectify entire groups of people by taking something that is dynamic and ever evolving and freezing it for a marketing photo opportunity.
”Flavia Dzodan (via comingonstrong)
because it still seems like many people need to be reminded…
(via garconniere)
(Source: seppin)
1,477 notes (via mycultureisnotatrend & seppin)
Specific details are desi-centric, but otherwise generally applicable.There is no such thing as ‘just words’. When looking at language & saying it is ‘just words’, is like saying the economy is ‘just trade’. So much of the contextualisation & recontextualisation of…
“Hello, someone referred me to your blog and I just wanted to say that I do love the Native American’s culture. My grandfather does carry Cherokee blood in him and I’m proud to have Native American lineage. My grandmother was a teacher for the Hopi and Pueblo tribes and my mother and uncle even…
26 notes (via mycultureisnotatrend)
That feel the need to troll the Internet looking for people being offensive JUST to start a fight? Seriously, you have nothing better to do then look for a fight but mask it as “defending your culture.” Fuck you, I’m German. I could go on all kind of “OMG DON’T CALL ALL GERMANS…
(Source: paraliann)
104 notes (via mycultureisnotatrend & paraliann)
mycultureisnotatrend + insomnia = thoughts
So I went to sleep at around 10:30 tonight and woke up a little past 12am, and it is now 3 and I’m wide awake. Lovely. But I did end up finding a tumblr, mycultureisnotatrend.tumblr.com, that is kind of interesting.
It can mostly be summarized as a native woman taking issue with the hipster fad of appropriating (trans: “picking and choosing certain parts without consideration of the whole”) native culture. I was rather fascinated because I was almost entirely unaware of this phenomenon (really, I was. I’ve seen the neon-colored feather headdresses in Hot Topic, and my reaction was “… What could the purpose of that possibly be? Who would buy that?” (The answer is: “”Fashion,” and hipster douchebags.”)
That feel the need to troll the Internet looking for people being offensive JUST to start a fight? Seriously, you have nothing better to do then look for a fight but mask it as “defending your culture.” Fuck you, I’m German. I could go on all kind of “OMG DON’T CALL ALL GERMANS…
(Source: paraliann)
104 notes (via mycultureisnotatrend & paraliann)
For the past 500 years we’ve been told our cultures were immoral and “savage”, our ancestors have been places in boarding schools to remove them from their culture by “Killing the Indian and saving the man”. After 500 years of being tormented for our beliefs, now people are screaming “teach me!”…
for more on native appropriation: http://mycultureisnotatrend.tumblr.com/
Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue cooorn moooooooon. y’know people dress up like Lady Gaga, is she a fad? people dress like tons of stuff. maybe sometimes it’s out of respect to that culture. I for one would love to ask the grinning bobcat why he grinssssss.
Lady Gaga does not suffer from cultural appropriation, regardless of whether she is a fad or not. Natives do, and this manifests itself in the way both society and the law treats them.
Cultural appropriation is not respecting someone’s culture, regardless of the individual’s intent. There is nothing about it that is respectful, because it almost always is rooted in not understanding the fundamental aspects of that culture, but rather, an Americanized, white version of it. Native peoples have asked multiple times that people not do this- and most people have disregarded the message. In many cases they insist they still have some right to appropriate it/use it/abuse it. That is not respectful. It is wrong
